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Reproductive Rights

There's no question that 2011 was a truly seismic year for reproductive rights in the U.S. More than 60 laws damaging women's access to reproductive health care passed in 24 states, an unprecedented assault on women's health care. And this year, the powerful aftershock has further strained women's reproductive autonomy. As of July, 15 states had already passed around 40 harmful laws—marking another year of unbridled animosity toward women.

In 2012, the Center for Women Policy Studies published the Reproductive Laws for the Twenty First Century Papers. In 1989, the Center launchedThe Law and Pregnancy Program: Implementing Policies for Women’s Reproductive Rights and Healthas the “second stage” of the groundbreakingProject on Reproductive Laws for the 1990s* at the Women’s Rights Litigation Clinic and the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers University.

2011 marked a banner year in the Republican war on woman’s health. Close to 1,000 anti-abortion bills sped through state legislatures as the GOP-led House led a “comprehensive and radical assault” on a federal level. But in surveying their arsenal this year, 10 bills stood out as particularly perturbing and far-reaching efforts to stymie women’s access to abortion services, birth control, and vital health services like breast cancer screenings.

2011 marked a banner year in the Republican war on woman’s health. Close to 1,000 anti-abortion bills sped through state legislatures as the GOP-led House led a “comprehensive and radical assault” on a federal level. But in surveying their arsenal this year, 10 bills stood out as particularly perturbing and far-reaching efforts to stymie women’s access to abortion services, birth control, and vital health services like breast cancer screenings.

For all bloggers who take interest in repro rights, NCRW is happy to announce and support another of the National Women’s Law Center’s blog carnivals .This blog carnival “Birth Control” We’ve Got you Covered” will be hosted July 21st, 2011, and is an exciting opportunity to create change for birth control and health care by convening the multiple voices of passionate bloggers. As you may know, in the upcoming months the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will decide on which preventive services will be covered without co-pay in new health insurance plans- and various women’s rights organizations are working hard to make sure birth control is included.

Anti-abortion rights group Americans United for Life (AUL) released Thursday a report of allegations against Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), some of which date back several years. Accompanying the group’s findings is a call for Congress to begin a taxpayer-funded investigation on Planned Parenthood. AUL has accused Planned Parenthood of misusing federal funds; knowingly violating state and federal laws; and misleading women about abortion, fetal development and emergency contraceptive drugs.

Although the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA or Planned Parenthood) advertises itself as an organization promoting health for women and families, it is the nation’s largest abortion provider and has been plagued by scandal and abuse.

Furthermore, PPFA and its affiliates receive hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayers’ funds every year – a significant portion of which comes from the federal government.

PPFA often tries to underplay the significance of abortion to its business model. However, as this report details, abortion has a tremendous impact on Planned Parenthood’s bottom-line. This is true to a greater degree each year, and Planned Parenthood has plans to expand its abortion business.

In this report, Americans United for Life documents the known and alleged abuses by Planned Parenthood, including:

Misuse of federal health care and family planning funds. State audit reports and admissions by former employees detail a pattern of misuse by some Planned Parenthood affiliates.

Failure to report criminal child sexual abuse. Substantial and still-developing evidence indicates that many Planned Parenthood clinics fail to report all instances of suspected abuse, and instead advise minors and their abusers on how to circumvent the mandatory reporting laws.

Failure to comply with parental involvement laws. Some Planned Parenthood affiliates exhibit a pattern and practice of violating and circumventing parental involvement laws.

Assisting those engaged in prostitution and/or sex trafficking. Some Planned Parenthood clinics have demonstrated a willingness to partner with pimps or sex traffickers to exploit young women instead of safeguarding their health and safety.

Misinformation about so-called “emergency contraception,” including ella. Planned Parenthood boasts of its role in the approval of a new drug ella, yet provides considerable misinformation about the drug.

Willingness to provide women with inaccurate and misleading information. Some Planned Parenthood affiliates continually demonstrate a disregard for women’s health and safety through their willingness to provide inaccurate and misleading information regarding fetal development and about abortion’s inherent health risks.

Willingness to refer to substandard clinics. Some Planned Parenthood affiliates put the lives and safety of women

and girls at risk by associating with substandard abortion providers.

In addition, this report documents the efforts of Planned Parenthood and its affiliates to defeat legislation intended to protect women and families, and to overturn common-sense federal and state laws, further enriching their “bottom-line” with attorney fee awards. In order to assess the extent of the scandal and abuse at PPFA and its affiliates, a full-scale, thorough Congressional investigation is necessary. In this report, Americans United for Life poses potential questions aimed at uncovering the depth of the problems within Planned Parenthood.

As The American Independent previously reported, anti-abortion rights group Americans United for Life (AUL) released Thursday a report of allegations against Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), some of which date back several years. Accompanying the group’s findings is a call for Congress to begin a taxpayer-funded investigation on Planned Parenthood. AUL has accused Planned Parenthood of misusing federal funds; knowingly violating state and federal laws; and misleading women about abortion, fetal development and emergency contraceptive drugs.

On Friday, Planned Parenthood released a statement to media outlets responding to AUL’s “ideologically-driven publication.”

From Planned Parenthood Federation of America:

The publication manufactured by AUL rejects scientific evidence, promotes false health claims, and recycles misleading and discredited charges, as well as old issues that have already been addressed. … Simply put, this “so-called” report actually insults the intelligence of anyone who reads it.

[...]

It’s clear that AUL is an ideological organization that will not let facts get in the way of their goal to overturn Roe v. Wade, and undermine women’s ability to go to Planned Parenthood and see the health care provider they trust.

PPFA has fact-checked AUL’s 37-page report and pointed out seven examples of “distortions and misrepresentations.” TAI has abbreviated PPFA’s rebuttal (below) for brevity. Planned Parenthood spokesperson Tait Sye told TAI in an e-mail that the fact check highlights only some of AUL’s “erroneous claims.” He said the charges that Planned Parenthood affiliates misused federal funds and over-billed for family-planning services are “recycled charges that have either been resolved, are pending resolution, or drawing unfounded conclusions from select pieces of data taken out of context.”

AUL Claim: The 2010 U.S. General Accounting Office report “demonstrates that even the federal government does not know” how much federal funding Planned Parenthood receives (p.8).

AUL Claim: “Planned Parenthood failed to provide the young woman who sought its advice essential information, including the fact that induced abortion increases the risk of miscarriage by 55 percent in subsequent pregnancies, and that there exists a heightened risk of suicide and psychiatric admissions to women s who have had an induced abortion” (p.22).

PPFA FACT CHECK: “This is blatantly false and scientifically inaccurate. A 2008 American Psychiatric Association report found no reliable evidence that abortion is linked to suicide. … A Guttmacher report states, “Several reviews of the available scientific literature affirm that vacuum aspiration—the modern method most commonly used during first-trimester abortions—poses virtually no long-term risks of future fertility-related problems, such as infertility, ectopic pregnancy, spontaneous abortion or congenital malformation.”

AUL Claim: “Notably, the RU-486 regimen often fails to cause a complete abortion. … [O]ff-label use by Planned Parenthood clinics up to 63 days or beyond is common, despite the increased risk of failure and the increased risks to women’s lives and health” (p.22).

PPFA FACT CHECK: AUL is false in asserting a high failure rate of medication abortion (RU-486). Medication abortions are successful about 97 percent of cases. AUL is also false in asserting that Planned Parenthood’s use of evidence-based protocol is unsafe. … Planned Parenthood’s Medical Standards and Guidelines are evidenced-based and the 63 day protocol was only approved after research was completed and published in the leading peer-reviewed journals.”

PPFA FACT CHECK: “This is a recycled charge similar to a misleading claim made by Rep. Jean Schmidt [R-Ohio] that PolitiFact fact checked, and called ‘false.’ They write, ‘(t)he anti-abortion groups came up with the 98 percent figure by comparing the number of abortions to the number of procedures in the other two categories. … But there are problems with that calculation. First, it assumes that pregnant women only go to Planned Parenthood for one of those three options.’”

AUL Claim: “Ectopic pregnancies ‘treated’ with the RU-486 regimen can rupture and kill the woman” (p.22).

PPFA FACT CHECK: “There is no evidence from published research studies to suggest that mifepristone increases the likelihood of rupture in an ectopic preganancy. In fact there are several studies, including aCochrane review of 35 studies, that demonstrate that mifepristone increases the success of standard medical treatment for ectopic pregnancy (methotexate). This would suggest that if mifepristone has any impact on the natural course of an ectopic pregnancy it is positive.”

AUL Claim: “Planned Parenthood boasts of its role in the approval of a new drug, ella, yet provides considerable misinformation about the drug” (p. 24).

PPFA FACT CHECK: “The health information on Planned Parenthood’s website is medically accurate and evidenced-based. … For patients that receive emergency contraception (EC), the information shared during the consent process is as follows: How does EC work? One type of EC (Plan B One-Step, Next Choice) is made of one of the hormones made by a woman’s body — progestin. Another type (ella) blocks the body’s own progestin. Both types of EC keep a woman’s ovaries from releasing eggs — ovulation. Pregnancy cannot happen if there is no egg to join with sperm.”

AUL Claim: AUL’s website says: “Some drugs classified as ‘contraceptives’ by the FDA, such as Intrauterine Devices (IUDs) and Plan B (the so-called ‘morning after pill’), can kill an embryo by blocking its ability to implant in the uterus. … Thus, if HHS decides to include ‘contraception’ as ‘preventive care,’ all insurance plans will be required to provide coverage of these abortion-inducing drugs.”

PPFA FACT CHECK: “It is scientifically and medically inaccurate to claim that contraceptives such as IUDs and Plan B are ‘abortion-inducing drugs.’ … It is further scientifically and medically inaccurate to claim that blocking implantation is an ‘abortion.’ A World Health Organization letter states, ‘To date, there is no scientific evidence supporting the contention that hormonal contraceptives and IUD prevent implantation of the fertilized.

This month signifies the importance of taking a stand for reproductive rights. Sixty-two years ago this December, the U.N. adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, setting forth basic human rights that underpin every person’s ability to live with dignity, enjoy full and equal citizenship, and lead a healthy and fulfilling life. A woman’s reproductive rights lie at the heart of that promise. When a woman is denied the ability to decide when and whether to have children and the information and means to do so, she cannot direct her own life, protect her health, and exercise her human rights.

Women's Media Center: Gloria Steinhem, co-founder of the Women's Media Center, writes about the importance of choosing pro-choice candidates this election season, and how reproductive freedom is intrinsically tied to economics.

Editorial:

"You may have noticed that Democratic candidates in tight races are actually bringing up the subject of abortion. In the past, they probably voted for the right of a woman and her doctor to make this decision, but then hoped the subject would just go away. Now that polls are showing women of all races to be the major firewall between Democrats and disaster, they are suddenly remembering that one in three American women needs an abortion at some time in her life, and that Republican candidates almost never get past their own primaries without promising to largely or totally criminalize it.The problem is that many Democrats have spent so long avoiding the subject of abortion─for example, downplaying it or even bargaining it away during the health care debate─that they haven’t a clue how to talk about it. As if to insure their own defeat, they sideline this and other reproductive rights as “social issues,” thus allowing media, pundits and even voters themselves to assume that such concerns are not as important or motivating as what are called “economic issues.”

Modern democracies other than our own recognize them and support reproductive rights, from sex education in schools and subsidized health care that includes contraception and child birth—with abortion as a lessened and uncontroversial element—to national systems of childcare, parental leave and work patterns that allow both women and men to be nurturing parents. In this country, however, right-wing opposition to sex education in public schools and to birth control as preventive health care─indeed, opposition to same-sex couples or any admission that human sexuality is not now and never has been solely about reproduction─has contributed to the highest teenage birthrate in any developed country. Indeed, 60 percent of all U.S. births are unplanned. That’s twice the rate of unintended pregnancies in comparable nations."

Just one month after the death of Dr. George Tiller, the Center for Reproductive Rights released a chilling report that shows abortion providers and their clinics are under siege. A four-month investigation in six states revealed that death threats, break ins, and assaults continue to impede women's access to clinics. Rather than use Tiller's death to make the case that doctors and their patients should be protected, the federal government has done very little. So how should those who believe in a woman's right to have an abortion respond?